Prayer

Henri Nouwen was an internationally known priest, professor and author of more than 40 books on the spiritual life.  He once wrote about how we tend to pray with closed hands.[1]   Nouwen wrote of watching an elderly woman being brought into a psychiatric center. She was wild, swinging at everyone and everything.  And as she lashed out, she gripped a tiny coin in one hand.  Perhaps it was like the coin you hold in your hand.  In spite of all her commotion and the pleading of the hospital staff, the coin remained in her hand.  She would not let go of that coin.  It finally took two people to pry open her clenched fist and take the coin away.  Nowen wrote, “It was as though she would lose her very self along with the coin.”  Nouwen reflected on how this woman and her coin were symbolic of the way many of us approach our life with God.  We pray with tightly clenched fists.  That is, many of us have at least one coin in our hands—one thing we will not or cannot let go of; one relationship, or dream, or hurt, or memory or possession that we are unwilling or unable to surrender in prayer to God.  We pray, Nouwen said, clinging tightly to that coin.  It’s as if we would lose our very self if we lost that coin.Read More »Living By the Prayer Jesus Died By: A Prayer of Our Surrender (Ps. 31:5-8)